Karen Salamy writes: This morning (June 21) the Western Flyer returned from 24-hour operations testing and integrating the new coringsled to Tiburon. Happily, I would like to inform everyone that the test dives were quite successful. Testing occurred at the Duo Seismo waypoint in the Southern Meander of Monterey Canyon during which all main functions of the coringsled operated within their designed ranges. The vehicle was able to maintain one steady position during the drilling operations allowing for two granite cores to be taken. Moreover, the second of these two cores was drilled in roughly the same amount of time (and length) as previous coring achieved by Ventana.

The success of these tests has resulted in the incorporation of the Tiburon coringsled on MBARI science dives at Juan de Fuca during July and August of this year.The aggressive (6 month) schedule of the project made it a definite challenge and these tests could not have been successful without the support and hard work by all those involved, including the engineering project team, TSD, and DMO. Thank you to the Tiburon pilots and the crew of the Western Flyer for working so hard over a very long 24-hour testing period.